


Postcards from the City of the Dead

by quid_est



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Implied Relationships, M/M, Poetry, Post Reichenbach, seven lines, seven words
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-26
Updated: 2013-03-26
Packaged: 2017-12-06 13:23:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/736177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quid_est/pseuds/quid_est
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You fill all the spaces I leave, now. I miss nothing, I miss everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Postcards from the City of the Dead

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> Written from a prompt by the brilliant Jude: seven words (or syllables), seven lines. Not beta'd or britpicked or any of that; my apologies.

What you missed: haggard, dry-eyed nights in  
a bedsit in Erebus. Too many cigarettes.  
A kidnapping, a dissolving international smuggling cartel,  
a quintuple murder. I bought new shoes.  
Imagining your fingers tangled in my hair,  
I shaved it off. Raw-scalped, bereft, new  
I haunted alleys you had never seen.  
  
What I missed: sleep. Meals. The jumper  
you left on the back of the chair.  
The echo of my voice reflected from  
your body. Your body. The luxury of  
believing none of these of note--deletable.  
You fill all the spaces I leave,  
now. I miss nothing, I miss everything.  
  
You are the hair-ends that, shorn sharp,  
worked themselves into my coat-collar, to needle  
my neck. The nights I have takeaway  
instead of more coffee. Hands shaking in  
vibrato against an invisible fingerboard (my violin  
unreachable, one of many things left lifeside);  
you hear each note I don't play.  
  
I, wealthy among the dead, employ two  
Charons; from Styx's sunlit side they send  
text messages. My piles of paper unsorted,  
in storage, pages curling like dried leaves.  
The ragged edge I left smoothed over,  
no seam. Neither of them will answer  
the questions that I do not ask.  
  
If they spoke, would they tell of  
your fall? As ever, you lag behind  
me in grace: I felt the weight  
of your impact in my chest, unrising,  
unfalling. Down, from grace, in love. Pity  
you did not open my mouth, beloved--  
my love for you was my passage-coin.


End file.
